Domiciliary care is an area of work where a large proportion of staff work alone. Whilst the majority of these workers will carry out their care-working role without incident, for some staff there may be times when they have to deal with situations that may cause them distress, fear, injury, pain and very rarely, death.

Serious incidents can lead to poor staff morale, high levels of absenteeism and retention problems which can cost the organisation large sums of money in staff replacement costs, higher insurance premiums, compensation payments and poor company image.

Employers already have a legal duty to maintain the health, safety and welfare of their staff. So to prevent distressing situations from occurring, organisations will need to take additional precautions, over and above their normal health and safety assessments, to ensure that lone workers are at no greater risk than any of their other employees.

Many measures can be taken to ensure the safety of lone workers. This guide available to download below focuses on assessing the risk to staff and putting in place a range of measures to reduce the likelihood of incidents occurring, including making sure that employees also take responsibility for their own personal safety.

The guide links to NVQ Unit HSC223 'Contribute to moving and handling individuals' and HSC360 'Move and position individuals'. However, from 2010 the NVQ units in Health and Social Care (HSC) will be replaced by Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF) units in HSC. Those units will be the basis of QCF awards, certificates and diplomas for social care. The QCF units and qualifications are being developed at the same time as the present guide is being published.

Domiciliary care - lone worker's safety guide (pdf)